Four Egg Hunts and a Birthday

Easter was eventful this year. My goodness!

Please excuse the picture overload. This is after I pared WAY back.

First, we attended an Easter Egg Hunt one Saturday morning at church.

Egg Count: 1

This picture is so random, but I love that you can see Jake and his buddy Cody.

Same with this one.

Our next hunt was with some friends at a small community park.

Egg Count: 3

And now for Easter morning. Between conference sessions (see, not our whole day was consumed by consumerism) we did a little egg hunt with Jakey in our backyard waste land.

He really started to get the idea behind picking up an egg and putting it in the basket and then knowing that he got to keep the basket after all was said and done.

Egg Count: 14!

After searching for eggs for about 15 minutes, we came in to find the baskets that the Easter Bunny left for us.

Mom got a Dove Chocolate Bunny (Jake was using my basket in the egg hunt)

Dad got a chocolate bunny and some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

And Jakey was spoiled with coloring books, Tadoodle crayons, a police car book and a new Elmo movie.

He was really cute to watch disect the entire basket piece by piece.

We let him have a few bites of his first chocolate Easter bunny.

An artsy moment at the last hunt of the season.

Together with the cousins, we hunted for more Easter eggs.

Egg Count: maybe a dozen?

There were a lot of eggs to go around.

All the cousins.

Jake and Gabe just because it is cute.

To wrap up our Easter we celebrated my step-mom, Louise's, birthday with a giant cake.

It was a great day and we really enjoyed our relaxed day at home with regular naps, conference and some quality family time. Hope your Easter was great as well.

Smile Moments

Cameron and I are attending the Strengthening Family class for Sunday School at church and each week our teachers ask us to share a moment from the week about our kids that made us smile. Lately all I have to blog are pictures of Jake doing everyday things, but these are the things that make me smile.

Jake fell asleep eating dinner. I watched him slowly nod off, until he just gave up and crashed. I carried up to bed and he slept the rest of the night and woke up 14 hours later. He had also been eating a lot the days leading up to this one and for the one after. I am thinking growth spurt since he has been acting completely normal since.

I taught Jake to watch TV. He loves, loves, loves Elmo. We have tried Curious George, Bear in the Big Blue House, Rollie Pollie Ollie, and Sid the Science Kid, but he only watches Elmo this intently.

Because Jake isn't a big eater we have gone back to spoon feeding him at least once a day. We are also teaching him to use a spoon. This is after I spoon fed him most of his yogurt and then decided to give him the rest to try on his own. He does try to use a spoon, but with yogurt especially, he always tries to drink the yogurt from the bowl. It is too cute.

Lastly, Jake is loving asserting his independence and sometimes disobedience. The dog bowls and water are off limits, and he knows that if we ask him to leave them alone once the second time will land him in timeout. This particular moment, Jake had clearly forgotten the rules, but it was just too funny to not take a picture.

Do you see my kid dancing in the water bowl? Silly boy.

Into Things

Some precious moments.

Jake. In a Cape. Making dinner.

What's for dinner, you ask?

Crackers, of course!

In love with this boy, and this picture.

I guess we forgot to feed the pups. :)

A Full Day of Family Fun

Yesterday started out early with Jake's 15 month well visit.

He is 22lbs, 10.5oz. 10-25%

He is is 32 inches tall. 75%

and a giant 49cm head. 90%

His weight is low and he is tall. I brought his weight up with the doc and she was not concerned. After taking one look at Cameron, she says it runs in the family. At any rate, we are trying to get Jake to eat more. She also was not worried about Jakes head. She didn't say it ran in the family, which was nice, but she did say it seemed proportionate to his body. Ohh.. Kay.

He also got his MMR and Varicella that we were behind on from his one year.

After our appointment, we enjoyed some yummy Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and were off!

Our big plans for the day were a spring training game, but first we stopped at Costco and Ikea. Did you know Ikea carried fabric? It was fun to check out what they had. And maybe you will see some projects using ikea fabric in the near future on my craft blog. Just maybe.

A quick run to Target while Jakey finished napping to get him some sun glasses and we were off to Scottsdale Stadium to watch the Giants and Mariners!

Jake did pretty good sitting in the grass for about two innings.

and then him and I walked around a bit.

(He clapped when others did and when the announcer spoke.)

Upon our return, I took some pictures of him and we drank some lemonade and left.

I think I saw a total of one minute of the entire game, but that was okay. It was all for experience's sake.

Two things I want to remember: It was blistering hot in the sun. Shade would have made my day. That and if Jake would wear a hat! I kept lathering on the sunscreen. I was really worried that he was going to burn. So yeah, shade and shorts, even if the temp is only 70. It felt really hot in the direct noon-day sun! AND, regarding parking at Scottsdale Stadium. Not so good, but we turned it into a good experience. We ended up parking near the transit station with the intention to take the free trolley to a stop near the stadium but then the pedicab drivers started circling like sharks. We gave in. Both ways. Hey, our pedicab tips were less than the 20$ the crazy people were charging for parking right near the stadium, so I guess we still win.

And in case you thought that was not enough, we made sure to stop at the CVS Minute Clinic on the way home because Cam has been miserable the last few days with a cold. It turns out that Momma Corynn was right and he had a sinus infection. A quick stop by Hob Lob for some fabric I was in need of to complete some projects, a 30 minute drive home, a trip to the grocery store and pharmacy and we were ready for dinner! We tried a new enchilada recipe and a dessert you will crave just from seeing pictures. And you will, very shortly, on my craft blog.

A Full Day - Check

Filled with Family - Check

and Fun? - Check, Check!

Skiing with The Hubs

Cameron had never been skiing before and after 4 years of marriage I decided it was time to fix that. It was a great day, not too cold, in fact it was down right hot in the middle of the day. It was also cheap. We got our rentals, lift tickets and ski school for $75 each and then it happened to be college week, so Cam and I whipped out our MCC I.D's for an extra 25% off! It was so nice of Jake's Aunt Karleen to help arrange some baby sitting in Flagstaff for the day. Thanks Karleen!

Enjoy some pics from the day, but don't judge. They were all taken with my phone. :) I tried to color correct them, but there is only so much you can do.

At lunch in the lodge.

The view from the ski school lift.

Cam

Me

An action shot

An action shot of Cam.

And us. Awww...

Snow Day

Our trip to flagstaff a few weeks ago was successful. We had two goals. One: to play in the snow at least once before Jake outgrew his snow gear we found on Gap clearance last year. And two: to spend time just being together as a family.

Some pictures of our little adventure.

My favorite one. :)

Snow Baby

He got happier after being out there a while. He "warmed" up to the idea of being in the snow and cold.

My happy cute boy.

He goes, "Ah!" if I ask him to smile so this is what you get.

He took his hat off.

Aren't little tiny snow bibs the cutest thing EVER!?

Proof I was there.

The Man.

We stayed at the Inn Suites in Flag. It was called The Hotel Aspen. We would totally do it again. My criteria for a hotel was that it had to be a suite so we could get Jake to sleep without having to hide in the bathroom and it had to be reasonably priced. $50 would have made me giddy with delight, $80 would have been my high, but this one landed right in the middle. It was newly renovated and so I didn't get the dirty crummy heebee jeebees and our down comforter was soft. They even had hot breakfast in the morning. Cam and I enjoyed a freshly made Belgian Waffle. :) If we had any complaints, it would be that the heater in our room rattled in the middle of the night - but I assume that was an isolated occurrence.

At any rate, we were happy and Jake was for sure happy... as long as he could press the buttons on the microwave. (Notice the little snow boots.)

Relaxing in front of the T.V. with some Girl Scout Cookies.

This post was all about Thursday. The next day, Cameron and I dropped Jake off with some very generous babysitters and headed further up the mountain to ski at Snowbowl. I forgot my camera though, so if I ever get the pictures off my phone, I will be sure to share. :)

The Bounce House Place

Well, we were supposed to go to Makutu's Island with some friends.

This is them, below.

But, when we got there and saw that the It's-A-Saturday-Morning-Let's-Have-A-Birthday-Party Crowd was not going to allow for much fun the boys got out their cell phones and Will found us this place, which totally rocked.

I have no idea what it was called, and google has failed me... (Tiffany will have to leave it in the comments for me!) But, it was $9.00 for kids and free for parents.

And we will so be going back because I bought Jake a $15.00 t-shirt which allowed him to bounce for "free" that day and then for $5.00 from then on out. (Well, as long as the t-shirt fits which will be until he is about 15.)

It was really fun. Cam and I both loved the slides, but this was for sure Jake's favorite toy in the whole place. :)